DON’T bother applying.
I’m talking about Lifetime’s movie, “Acceptance,” which is about kids who are obsessed with getting into Harvard, but is so badly written it wouldn’t make it as a college application essay.
“Acceptance” The Movie (taken from a much better book, “Acceptance: A Novel”) follows three smart kids in the weeks before college acceptance letters go out. They are also dealing with serious issues such as parental pressure, self-mutilation and obsessive/compulsive stealing.
This movie handles those issues as if they’re just the kind of things those darned silly kids get into when they’re stressed.
Think “Juno” meets Bozo.
The bon mot -afflicted narrator, Taylor Rockefeller (Mae Whitman, who is the best thing about the movie), tell us things like: “Justin has perfect SATs — all 800s — which makes him a collect call!”
And, “I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t have an eating disorder — at least I’m not a cliché.” Oh, yes, you are.
Taylor is, in fact, the clichéd, smart-mouth teen who is different from everyone else — mostly because she keeps saying she is. Taylor wants to go to a not-great college while her burlesque-grotesque mother — played by Joan Cusack and totally wasted in a ruinous part — is supposed to makes us laugh wildly (goofy music warns us when to laugh). She wants only Harvard or Wellesley for Taylor because of “academic excellence and spousal potential.” Right.
My daughter went to Wellesley and unless a girl wants a wife, a women’s college is not exactly the place one goes to husband hunt.
Anyway, mom is a fool who does things like swim on her back in a roomful of mail (to a Strauss Waltz) after she discovers Taylor has been cutting herself and stealing all the neighbor’s mail.
Hey, if someone’s daughter is cutting herself and committing a federal crime, why not turn it into a funny scene? Makes me think that director Sanaa Hamri had some sort of break with reality herself during filming.
Anyway, Taylor’s friend, the beautiful Maya (Deepti Daryanni), wants to be a poet but her incredibly stererotyped Indian parents will only allow her to apply to Harvard and MIT, where she is not supposed to learn about such things.
Finally (thank God), there’s Harry (Jonathan Keltz), a bad, 2009-version of Alex P. Keaton who dresses in blue sports jackets and khakis everyday because he’s determined to go to Harvard. Do I have to tell you where this is headed?
The only thing going for this amateurish high-school version of a real movie is the cast who is wasted, while wasting their time and ours.
“Acceptance” is simply not acceptable.